January/February 2018

January/February 2018

Three decades ago, doing therapy was a relatively uncomplicated affair. After graduate school, you set up shop as a family therapist, a psychodynamic healer, or a cognitive-behavioral specialist. Whichever model you adopted, you were likely to see yourself as firmly in charge of the process, with your client (or “patient”) following your lead. You, after all, were the expert. Few clinicians felt the need to explain how therapy was going to proceed, or if, indeed, it would even work. It’s a different world now.

What Are We Promising Our Clients?

Decades ago, trainees in our field were imbued with the notion that therapy was about transformation: big, dramatic changes in the direction of self-actualization. Was this an overpromise? And now, when the average length of therapy in the United States is less than eight sessions, is it even desired by clients anymore, or necessary for successful therapy?

Navigating Therapy with Today's Clients

Today’s clients are shifting out of their customary position of mannerly deference and asserting far more specifically what they want—and don’t want—from therapy. Increasingly, therapists are moving from the role of acknowledged expert in the room to something approaching an informed colleague. For some, it’s a sea change in professional identity, but a growing body of evidence suggests it pays off.

How to Harness Your Social Engagement System

We all know people who have the magic touch when it comes to relating to others. They can instantly connect with strangers and put people at ease without even saying a word. Therapists with this ability have a natural advantage, so are there specific behaviors we can practice to elicit trust and openness? Luckily, the answer is yes—and Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory provides the key.

When Is It Right for Your Clients?

In past decades, the only alternatives to involuntary celibacy in a relationship were affairs or divorce. But more and more therapists are recognizing there’s another option: consensual nonmonogamy. Although the idea isn’t new, it’s challenging our field to see that committed, secure relationships can take many shapes and forms.

A Networker Tribute

To be a young, intellectually curious therapist in the 1960s and ’70s was to fall under the spell of the new systems practitioners, who were redefining what psychotherapy was all about. And no one embodied this new way of practicing the clinical craft with more skill, creativity, and chutzpah than Salvador Minuchin. In light of his recent passing, we pay tribute to his influence on several generations of therapists.